Screwing the inscrutable, Effing the ineffable – All my postings on this site are licenced under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

Seinfeld On Studying Scientology

There’s an article in Parade which has been making the rounds and raising some hackles, wherein Jerry Seinfeld makes some comments about Scientology.

“You would just understand that there’s this kind of voice, and then there’s this kind of voice, and then there’s this kind of voice... Just a little thing like that, understanding that really helped me on stage to understand how you have to invade the space of the audience a little bit. I learned that early on. It was a very helpful thing to learn. You have to invade them just a little bit. Not too much, because then it’s obnoxious. But you can’t be short of them either, or you won’t control them.”

Note that he’s not a fan of Scientology the religion at all – there’s an episode (‘The Parking Garage’) in which he takes a bit of a jab at it – he’s just appreciative of some of the mind-control techniques they use, and how he’s been able to adapt them to his comedy routines.

Given how effective those techniques seem to be at screwing up the brains of otherwise seemingly intelligent people, I’m not sure that’s any less scary.